Critiques of contributionism

A number of critiques about contributionism along with any counter arguments.

A number of critiques can be made about contributionism that also have a number of counter arguments.

Time consuming to record and verify contributions

Critique

The cost of recording and verifying contributions would be too high. Contributors should be fully focussed on operating and improving the organisation, not recording and measuring their contributions.

Counter arguments

• Highly beneficial for contributors - There is a cost to the organisation when time is required to record and verify contributions. However for contributors this can be highly valuable as it gives them a way to showcase their contributions to other people in the organisation and also outside the organisation. They would now be able to start building up their reputation using these records of contribution.

• Market created solutions - A growing number of contributors that start recording and verifying their contributions can lead to a growing demand for solutions that simplify this process. Solutions that speed up and simplify the process could represent a valuable product that these contributors or organisations are willing to pay for.

• Start with simple solutions - Organisations don’t need to record every single contribution someone makes. They only need to record and verify enough information to collectively make a sufficiently informed decision at the end of each year about how any surplus profits should be allocated. There is nothing wrong with using a more observational approach to start with. The organisation is ultimately just trying to create a fairer and more representative outcome based on the value of each person's contributions.

Complex and time consuming to evaluate contributions

Critique

Evaluating contributions could be highly complex and time consuming and could lead to numerous arguments and conflicts that are more problematic than the value it provides. Many contributions are unique and it will be very difficult to compare these with others.

Counter arguments

• Highly beneficial for incentive alignment - If there is no effort to try and evaluate people's contributions there is no way to reward people fairly based on the value and impact they generate for the organisation. The cost of not doing this is too high as it leads to a demotivating environment where people don’t feel valued. Why work hard and make impactful contributions if this doesn’t lead to a fair reward? In structures like capitalism it leads to larger shareholders receiving the majority of the benefit which may be due to other peoples valuable contributions. Contributors highly benefit from their contributions being fairly evaluated as this creates the foundation for being treated fairly when working with others. Fair contribution evaluations can help with ensuring that incentives are strongly aligned with performance and impact.

• Market created solutions - Organisations that regularly evaluate contributions can help with creating demand for new solutions that could make the evaluation process simpler and quicker.

• Varied approaches - There does not need to be a one size fits all approach for contribution evaluation. There could be multiple simple approaches that are quick and simple but less accurate. Numerous complex approaches could also exist that are better at exploring the nuances between different contributions such as contributions that are more novel or unique. Each organisation could adopt different approaches based on its own preferences and requirements.

• Cooperative organisations - Organisations that prefer to be more cooperative instead of competitive can be examples of where contribution evaluation would be less of an ongoing concern as they might not need to determine the most accurate outcome for compensating each person's contribution. Cooperative organisations might prefer simplicity when evaluating contributions and value other things such as achieving a certain mission, improving work life balance, increasing the amount of community interactions or on overall collective well being.

Complex and time consuming to reflect on contributions

Critique

Contributors don’t have time to reflect on historical contributions and need to focus on operating the organisation. Reflecting on historical contributions could mean wasting time and giving competitors an advantage.

Counter arguments

• Delayed reflection - Organisations do not necessarily need to do reflections every year. If there is no surplus funds that could be used for rewarding historical contributions an organisation may decide to postpone any reflection efforts until a future year. Organisations should make their own decisions about when it makes sense to reflect on historical contributions.

• External data & reflection - Contributors could benefit from data and reflections that have happened outside the organisation. External data could help with providing evidence about the impact and value that someone's contribution has made more broadly in a community. External reflections could come to similar conclusions about the value and impact that someone has generated. These data points could then be used internally in the organisation.

• External solutions - Similar to evaluating contributions, other people may offer a service or solution to help with reflecting on historical contributions to make the process simpler and quicker.

• Varied approaches - Organisations could choose to reflect on historical contributions as frequently or infrequently as they prefer. Many different approaches could be adopted based on the preferences and requirements of the organisation.

• Cooperative organisations - Cooperative organisations that prefer more simple and equal distributions of compensation could also benefit from a simpler reflection process as they would not need to convert those reflections into suggestions for compensating the most impactful historical contributions. Instead a more cooperative organisation might focus on identifying the impactful and valuable contributions to show more appreciation to those contributors in different ways that might be preferred in that organisation.

Ongoing possibility that riskier contributions are still excessively rewarded

Critique

The initial contributors that start an organisation could still use risk reward multipliers that give them an excessive return on investment for their contributions. This could come at the expense and exploitation of future contributions.

Counter arguments

• Risk of losing top performing talent - Early contributors could manipulate the organisation's parameters to their advantage, however these parameters and decisions would be known by any future prospecting contributors. If the early contributors have been unreasonable there is a higher chance that top performing talent decides to not join the organisations due to disagreements in these decisions.

• Prevents infinite compensation - Even if the early contributors reward themselves beyond what is fair and reasonable there would at least be the benefit of a cap on the return they would receive. This would enable fair compensation for future contributions once this cap has been reached, or when the incentive right has expired. This enables the organisation to then evolve and move on as new contributions get provided.

Ongoing battle for influence & power

Critique

People could continuously try to game the contribution system to get as much power and influence over an organisation as possible. If a small group is able to gain a governance majority due to their contributions they could try to exploit other contributors.

Counter arguments

• Perpetual influence and power under capitalism - What can be more problematic than an organisation that has changing influence and power structures is unchangeable stagnation. Contributors in a capitalist system can often be unable to influence change regardless of the collective preferences and needs of the organisation. Capitalism often leads to a small minority of contributors having perpetual influence and power over the rest of the organisation. Future owners could simply inherit the shares of previous owners and may have made no contributions to the organisation whatsoever. Contributionism help to avoid this problem of ownership stagnation but organisations would still need to take on the responsibility of handling changes in influence and power and selecting leadership when this is necessary.

• Leadership contracts - Leadership contracts provide an organisation the ability to elect people into positions of influence and power when this might make sense to do so. Some organisations might prefer to do collective decision making for every decision. Others may prefer to benefit from the efficiency of selecting someone to take on certain responsibilities.

• Ongoing contribution reflection - Reflections on historical contributions should help with identifying situations where someones contributions have been under or over compensated. These processes could help with rectifying these problems if they occur. If contributions are public these reflections could also happen externally where other data points or analysis on people's contributions could lead to identifying situations where someone is receiving an unfair amount of compensation.

• External solutions - Contributions being measured and rewarded across different organisations can help with driving demand for solutions that do this accurately and easily. The better these solutions become the more fair and reasonable the outcomes will be that will prevent people from getting influence and power that they wouldn’t have received if the contributions were evaluated and understood more accurately.

• Regulation and compliance - The justice system could introduce regulations and policies that help to protect minority contributors. Smaller contributors could be vulnerable to exploitation from people who have a lot of power and influence due to a larger amount of contribution. Courts could be used to help with handling disputes similar to how they protect shareholders in capitalist systems by preventing unfair dilution.

• Long term reputation damage - If contributors try to take more compensation, influence and power than their contributions are worth then this can create a risk that they damage their reputation. This could be especially damaging if the contributions are public as this could limit their chances of being accepted into other organisations. This provides another reason why public contributions can be highly effective as it creates an effective deterrent for trying to abuse a single organisation as it could jeopardise the rest of their career.

Market failures

Critique

Contributionism doesn’t solve the problem of market failures. If contributionism is adopted in a market economy it can be expected that market failures would still occur. These outcomes could be costly for society.

Counter arguments

• Collective decision making - Contributionism is more representative of collective preferences as most of the contributors involved in an organisation would receive governance rights. This could help with making decisions that are more reflective of what the rest of society would want rather than a small minority that is only focussed on profit. Collective decision making could help with reducing the amount of certain market failures and thus making it easier for governments to handle the remaining failures that do still occur.

• Government solutions - Commons ownership, regulation, policies and governance interventions should help with both preventing and responding to market failures.

• Other economic approaches - Contributionism could be adopted in different economic systems that don’t use markets. Contributionism isn’t reliant on exchange being handled in a specific way. Economies may eventually move away from market based economies which could resolve these issues.

Difficulty in gaining adoption

Critique

Existing corporations and organisations don’t have an incentive to adopt this economic model as it is not beneficial to the existing shareholders.

Counter arguments

• New organisations - New organisations could be started that adopt contributionist principles. Even whilst using capitalist legal structures the principles of contributionism could still be adopted. Organisations that openly adopt these principles could help with creating demand for regulation that formally supports a contributionist organisational structure. New organisations could help with encouraging existing organisations to convert to a contributionist structure once the model has proven its effectiveness.

• Emerging Web3 ecosystems - Web3 ecosystems can help with decentralising important pieces of infrastructure and systems that impact people's lives. There is a general intent from these ecosystems to push more power to the edges. Contributionism is highly aligned with the intents and motives behind Web3 technology. Smart contract platforms and organisations building on top of this infrastructure could adopt contributionist principles. These emerging Web3 economies could grow to eventually replace many existing organisations and systems across the globe. Web3 ecosystems represent a highly suitable industry for adopting contributionism.